Litchfield to implement survey to assess attitudes, including toward drug use

LITCHFIELD >> More than 15 Connecticut towns have implemented the Search Institute’s student Attitudes and Behaviors survey that Litchfield Schools is looking to hand to students in the next month or so. Officials from community groups that helped implement the survey in Danbury and Old Saybrook shared their thoughts on the 160 question pen and paper survey.

The survey is the first of possibly many steps in Litchfield to curtail drug use in the community. The survey is designed to measure attitudes, perception of community life, how students spend their time and involvement in negative activities. It is not focused specifically on drug use.

Search Institute’s Attitudes and Behaviors survey measures risky behaviors and identifies what Search Institute calls developmental assets. A developmental asset is a specific positive experience, commitment or value. For instance, if on questions regarding family support, if a student’s answers determine that his or her “family life provides high levels of love and support,” a student would gain that one asset. There are a maximum of 40 assets in the Attitudes and Behaviors survey.

A community with 31-40 assets is optimal, according to a 2011 Search Institute survey results summary in Ridgefield. Ridgefield students averaged 20.1 assets in 2011, with only 8 percent of its student population in the 31 to 40 range. The summary also breaks assets down by grade level, allowing a school district to see if one particular grade is more problematic than others.

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There is no date set for the survey to be given out in Litchfield, where the plan is to have seventh through twelfth graders take the roughly 35-minute survey during school hours. The Litchfield Prevention Council is currently reviewing the survey and will submit a recommendation to the Board of Education before a date will be set to give the survey to students. Parents can opt out if they choose not to have their children take the survey.

The cost to the school district would be roughly $3 per survey. This cost includes the analysis, which would take roughly six weeks to complete. The Search Institute survey has been used nationally for over 20 years and served over 2 million 6-12 graders across the nation.

As is the case in Litchfield, Connecticut Prevention Network representatives were in some way involved with the use of surveys in both Danbury and Old Saybrook. CPN has 13 regional action councils set up geographically. So, while Litchfield utilizes the Housatonic Valley Coalition Against Substance Abuse, Hartford would contact Capitol Area Substance Abuse Council and New Haven would speak with the Valley Substance Abuse Action Council. The councils all have different names based on geography, but serve the same purpose.

Danbury, like Litchfield, was in touch with HVCASA when the town first implemented the survey in 2010. Local substance abuse prevention collaborative Stand Together, Make a Difference teamed with the regional council to get a better picture of where their student body’s issues were.

“I wanted to get a sense of what the student issues were, specifically here at Danbury High School since I work at the high school,” Stan Watkins, crisis intervention counselor at Danbury High School and Stand Together, Make a Difference chair said. “I thought the survey would be the best way to go about that.”

Danbury High School students in grades nine through 12 took the survey. Watkins said there was very little dispute from parents, with only about 12 opt outs. After allowing six weeks for analysis, Danbury school officials looked over the results. Watkins said that they knew they couldn’t address everything but looked for items or trends that really jumped out at them.

“One of the things that came right out to us was kids expressed a disconnect with the community in terms of seeing people or organizations that were there to help them or be of service to them,” he said.

From there, Danbury began to offer more alterative activities and educational programs directed at both students and parents in the community. They had an expo at the high school and brought in a number of anti-drug and alcohol agencies to do presentations.

As a way to see if their efforts were bearing fruit, Danbury officials implemented the survey a second time in the Fall of 2013 as a way to cross-reference the results. Watkins said that they are just now comparing the numbers between the two surveys but that “it looks like, except for marijuana, the numbers went down or in the direction that we wanted them to.”

“On the addiction and substance abuse preventions results we recognized the large misunderstandings about the risks of underage drinking,” DJ Jimenez, of Stand Together, Make a Difference said. “That became a big part of our awareness campaign this year.”

Unlike Litchfield, Danbury has two school resource officers and had them “well prior” to the initial survey in 2010. Watkins said that HVCASA helped find the survey, were part of the committee that implemented it and had personnel in the building the day-of when the surveys were handed out in both 2010 and 2013.

Like Danbury, Old Saybrook is on a cycle and has had students take these surveys roughly every other year since 1997 in grades seven through 12. Healthy Communities Healthy Youth, a town advisory board, was at the forefront of implementing the survey five times thus far, with plans for a sixth.

“It’s been a wonderful tool for many reasons,” HCHY Coordinator Wendy Mill said. “We’ve found it to be a great way for the students to give their feedback in a very objective and concrete way.”

They knew they could be doing more for the kids in town, Mill said. The results of recent surveys confirmed this notion, showing that a very low number of students in Old Saybrook felt valued, only 27% as of 2010. Mill said that number has risen significantly.

One way of remedying the issue, she said, was the unique idea of allowing student representatives on town boards, including Parks and Recreation, the town council and the youth and family board. In some cases, students are non-voting members and are there to be involved and absorb information, in others, like the Healthy Community Healthy Youth commission, they have full voting powers. This plan was implemented in the early to mid-2000s, Mill said.

“It really has given the students a voice in our town,” Mill said. “A way to be recognized in a positive way.”